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Reçu aujourd’hui — 16 juillet 2026 ⏭
  • ✇Euromaidan Press
  • One Greek company keeps Russia’s Arctic gas moving—and Athens won’t let the EU touch it
    Greece is blocking the European Union's newest round of sanctions on Russian gas to shield a single shipping company, the Financial Times reported. The objection has stalled the bloc's 21st sanctions package for a week and forced an emergency extension of the cap on Russian oil prices. At the center sits one Greek tycoon and a fleet of tankers built for Russia's Arctic. As Russia's full-scale war grinds on, the money that funds it still moves by sea, and the tangle of Weste
     
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✇Euromaidan Press

One Greek company keeps Russia’s Arctic gas moving—and Athens won’t let the EU touch it

Par :Yuri Zoria
16 juillet 2026 à 03:46

one greek company keeps russia's arctic gas moving—and athens won't let eu touch · post greece-based dynagas ltd's lng carrier yenisei river named after russia dynagaspartnerscom yenisei_river_big greece blocking european

Greece is blocking the European Union's newest round of sanctions on Russian gas to shield a single shipping company, the Financial Times reported. The objection has stalled the bloc's 21st sanctions package for a week and forced an emergency extension of the cap on Russian oil prices. At the center sits one Greek tycoon and a fleet of tankers built for Russia's Arctic.

As Russia's full-scale war grinds on, the money that funds it still moves by sea, and the tangle of Western-owned vessels wired into that trade keeps blunting the sanctions meant to cut it off.

The company at the center

Athens is protecting Dynagas after its ambassador warned the sanctions would "ruin" the company owned by Greek shipowner George Prokopiou. Greece's ambassador to the EU told fellow envoys on Wednesday that the planned measures, which would ban transporting Russian LNG to third countries, would "ruin" the firm, two people briefed on his remarks said. Two others confirmed he had named Dynagas as the reason Greece could not back the package.

The company operates 27 gas tankers, according to maritime data portal Equasis. A third of them are Arc7 vessels, ice-hardened ships built to handle the frozen waters near the Yamal plant on Russia's northern coast. Only 15 such carriers keep Yamal's exports running year-round, and European companies control most of them, an arrangement that leaves Russia's Arctic gas trade exposed to any Western move against the ships. 

Dynagas has moved more than 10 million tons of Russian LNG since the start of 2025, the FT calculated using data from analytics firm Kpler, identifying 11 of its ships that completed 144 voyages in that time.

EU 17th sanctions package Russian LNG
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Europe can legally quit Russian LNG today. It keeps choosing not to.

A veto that freezes the whole package

The EU's 21st sanctions package needs unanimous support, so one refusal is enough to hold it. Greece's objection has left the rest of the package stalled, freezing planned measures against additional Russian banks, crypto platforms, and defense-industry firms. The package also carries a mechanism to lower the ceiling above which companies may legally buy and transport Russian crude. 

The bloc's previous round added 46 shadow-fleet tankers to its blacklist, bringing the total past 630 ships.

Prokopiou controls Dynagas alongside Dynacom, whose Russian-crude trade has brought in $915 million over three years — the biggest such haul of any Greek shipowner. When the US-Israel war with Iran erupted, Dynacom was among the earliest operators willing to run tankers through the Strait of Hormuz.

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